“I don’t want to comment on that right now,” Stoops said. “Patrick’s done some very good things. I’m not going to sit here and throw him under the bus. We need to play better around him. There were some drops out there. There were some protection issues. There’s enough blame to go around.”

So Saturday’s win was critical for Towles.

Instead of inconsistency, he found a rhythm. Instead of incompletions, he found accuracy.